Shatterproof

by Roland Smith

  “What happened?” Amy asked, curious despite herself.

  “Invasion,” Bazzi answered. “The manuscripts were hidden in the walls of houses, in dry wells, buried in the sands of the Sahara so the invaders could not destroy them. The manuscripts were preserved by the dry air for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until quite recently that people felt secure enough to start bringing them to light. Last week, five hundred manuscripts were brought in. The week before, twice that many. It is one of the biggest collections of ancient manuscripts in the world, but because of our isolation few people know about them.”

  “Who brings them in?” Jake asked.

  “Old Timbuktu families, the military, desert tribes. We pay them what we can for retrieving our heritage, but funding is limited.”

  Amy looked around at the thick walls that housed thousands of manuscripts. It was as if rivers of ancient knowledge converged within the institute, safe for another century. “We’ll make a donation before we leave,” Amy said.

  “That’s very kind of you. We will accept it, but you can do something else for us.”

  “Sure,” Amy said.

  “Most people know about the famous cathedrals of Europe, or the caravan routes in the East,” Bazzi said. “But few people know about the ancient route where knowledge was shared. We call it the Ink Road, and you are at its epicenter.” He pointed at the manuscript in the glass case. “Who’s to say? Perhaps there is something in one of the manuscripts that has yet to be discovered by modern man. Will you tell people about our manuscripts? The only way to preserve them is for people to know.”

  “We’ll tell everyone,” she promised, and mentally wrote out a check that would ensure the institute was funded for another fifty years. It wasn’t always awful to be a Cahill.

  “Thank you,” Bazzi said. “Now, if you will follow me, our best computer is in our cataloging room.”

  He led them through a maze of glass cases to a small door in the back. When he opened it, a blast of stale air hit them.

  “Preservatives,” Bazzi explained. “Perhaps a little mold. You will get used to the odor.” He switched on the lights and then headed back to his desk.

  It wasn’t a room. It was a warehouse. Manuscripts were stacked on racks twenty feet high.

  Amy went pale. “It looks like an ancient recycling center. We’ll never find the ‘Apology’ here.”

  “It’s not as hopeless as you think,” Jake said. “Remember the margin of error.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Vesper’s note,” Jake said. “‘Off to Timbuktu you go. No margin for error.’”

  Amy was still confused.

  Jake picked up a manuscript from one of the shelves and pointed to the doodlings around the primary text. “I’m guessing the ‘Apology’ is written in the margin of one of the manuscripts, in Latin.”

  “That has to be it!” Amy threw her arms around him. Jake pulled her tightly to him . . . until they both realized what he was doing. The two snapped apart as if they had been shocked, but their eyes met again. Amy’s face was flaming and even Jake looked a little flushed. They tilted closer and closer together, as if some magnetic force was pulling at them. Jake leaned and Amy leaned, the space between them growing smaller and smaller. And then their lips touched.

  Amy jumped back like a scalded cat, leaping away from an equally flustered Jake Rosenbloom.

  “I’m — um —” Amy hadn’t been tongue-tied like this in weeks. She took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat and her voice came out as a squeak. “I’ll go out and Mouse the Dan.” Her cheeks burned. “Tell the Mouse to find Dan! I’ll go out.” She turned around and marched resolutely to the door.

  “Yeah . . . uh . . .” Jake’s mouth wasn’t cooperating, either. “Good idea. I’ll . . . uh . . . I’ll start skimming the margins.”

  But he was speaking to an empty room. Amy Cahill was gone.

  As Bart predicted, Dan and Atticus were not welcomed with open arms at Mamma Haidara’s. The librarian, a Mr. Srour, nearly tossed them out as soon as they walked in. He was an older man with white hair, wearing stained khaki pants, a white shirt, and a tattered sports coat. Atticus pulled out his Harvard student card, but Srour scowled at it through thick glasses as if it were fake. Atticus’s next tactic was to drop a name. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my father,” Atticus said. “His name is Dr. Mark Rosenbloom.”

  “The archaeologist?”

  Atticus nodded.

  “I met him,” Srour admitted grudgingly. “Several years ago.”

  “That’s right!” Atticus said. “I’d forgotten. He was here to examine an old dig outside the city near the Niger River.”

  Dan interrupted. “Dr. Rosenbloom sent us here to find something called the ‘Apology for a Great Transgression.’ ”

  “Ahhh,” Srour said.

  “You know it?” Dan asked, excitedly.

  “No,” Srour said, shaking his head. “There are hundreds of thousands of manuscripts scattered throughout the city in libraries like ours, in museums, and in private homes,” Srour said. “I’ve done the calculations. It would take one hundred scholars twenty years to read them all, and that’s if they each read one full manuscript every day.”

  “We don’t have that much time!” Dan said.

  “All I can do is look up the phrase on my computer and see if it is in our database. If you’ll wait here.” He walked through a doorway in back of the reception area.

  “There aren’t a hundred of us,” Dan said, “and we don’t have twenty years to skim a million moldering manuscripts. We have less than twenty hours, or someone is going to die.”

  The boys immediately split up and started sorting through the manuscripts on display.

  After a few minutes, Srour came back through the door, shaking his head. “I did the search several ways. The word apology doesn’t appear at all, and our collection is completely digitized. I’d recommend examining the other collections. There’s a map of them on the wall in my office.”

  They followed him into his office. The map took up most of the wall behind his desk. It was dotted by red and blue pins. “The blue pins are the public collections,” Srour explained. “The red pins are the private collections. The private collections are in people’s homes. We are trying to convince them to bring the manuscripts in, but people are reluctant to give up their family heirlooms.”

  There were a lot more red pins than blue. And there were a lot more places holding manuscripts than Atticus would have guessed. Dan was staring at the map as if he were hypnotized by it.

  “I guess we better get going. Thanks for your time.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t more help,” Srour said.

  Out on the street, Atticus asked Dan what the plan was.

  “The plan is in serious jeopardy,” Dan said. “According to Srour’s map, almost every other building in Timbuktu has a load of ancient manuscripts. To find them all we’d have to almost do a house-to-house search. I guess we should start with the blue pins. When we get done with those, we’ll start in on the red pins.”

  Dan’s head was reeling. Vesper One’s ransom demands were always difficult, but this one was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Like a needle in a thousand haystacks. His chest tightened. He could almost feel the time counting down with each heartbeat.

  “What about Bart?” asked Atticus.

  “We sure don’t need a taxi.” Dan pointed to a building less than half a block away. “That’s the next blue pin, and there are two reds in between.”

  The Mouse ran up to them and started jabbering in a combination of Arabic and French. When the Mouse paused for breath, Atticus turned to Dan and translated.

  “He says that Jake and Amy think the apology will be written in the margins, not the main text.”

  “Of course,” Dan said. “‘Margin of error’! Tell him about the blue and red pins. Even with the margins, it’s still going to be impossible to flip through all the manuscripts. Someo
ne’s going to have to get lucky.”

  Dan told the Mouse about the blue and red pens. The small boy nodded, then sprinted back down the sandy street, dodging camels, goats, and . . .

  “What are people from Timbuktu called?” Dan asked.

  Atticus wasn’t sure. “Timbuktians?” he guessed.

  “Let’s go meet some of them.”

  Amy walked back into the library warehouse after getting the message from the Mouse. Jake was busy skimming manuscripts for Latin. She wanted to talk to him about the . . . thing. The thing that had sort of happened between them. The thing that was never going to happen again. But the blue and red pins were a lot more important at the moment.

  “Wow,” Jake said, looking everywhere but at her. “That many?”

  “Dan has perfect recall.”

  Jake gazed at the shelves of manuscripts they hadn’t gotten to. “Then we have a problem.”

  Amy nodded. “That’s why I was thinking we should split up.”

  Jake jerked his head toward her, alarm written all over his face.

  “I didn’t mean —” Amy stopped herself. She didn’t know what she meant. “I’ll go to the next library while you finish here.”

  “Stay here!” Jake blurted. “I mean, we could finish in half the time if we work together. It’s the same difference either way.”

  Amy shook her head and let her hair cover her flaming cheeks. “We have to streamline the process. I can do a computer search at the next library while you finish up here.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be running around on your own.”

  Now Amy had to smile. The only reason she and Dan hadn’t been kidnapped like the others was because she had single-handedly punched and kicked their three assailants into submission. Well, she had to admit that Dan had helped by dousing the three men with gasoline and threatening to light them on fire. But still.

  “I appreciate your concern,” she said. And she meant it. “I’ll take the Mouse with me. He’ll come and get you if there’s even a hint of a problem.”

  “Fine,” Jake said, but she could tell he was unhappy. “I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m done here.”

  The first three places Dan and Atticus went into were complete busts. None of them had heard of the “Apology for a Great Transgression” and all their manuscripts had been digitized. They walked down the street toward the fourth collection and were stopped in their tracks by a noxious smell and a swarm of flies.

  “Butcher shop,” Atticus said.

  “Camel heads,” Dan said.

  There were six of them stacked in a short pyramid outside the butcher’s door.

  “The sign says the camel heads are eight dollars apiece,” Atticus said.

  “What a bargain!” Dan said. He took his camera phone out to get a photo of the grisly sight. “Remind me not to order any red meat while we’re here.”

  As he snapped the picture, his phone chimed.

  “I’ve got bars!”

  He wasn’t the only one. People poured out of the shops and houses, whipping cell phones out of their pockets and robes. Dan and Atticus were jostled, elbowed, and stepped on as the Timbuktians jockeyed for position to catch a signal. After a few seconds there was a collective moan of disgust as the elusive signal drifted elsewhere.

  The crowd dispersed. Some returned to their homes and shops, others ran down the street holding their cell phones in the air to try to catch the tail end of the signal.

  Someone shouted. Dan and Atticus turned from the signal catchers and saw a bloody-aproned butcher pointing angrily at the pyramid of camel heads. The top one was missing.

  Looking at the pile of heads, something snapped in Dan’s head.

  Heads for Phoenix. Tails for Oh.

  The camel heads didn’t look nearly as funny as they had a second before.

  He looked down at his screen.

  I set you up to SUCCEED at the Pergamon Museum. And succeed you did. I will tell you all about The Book of Ingenious Devices when I see you. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to that day. AJT

  “Succeeded for him,” Dan said.

  “What?” Atticus asked.

  “None of your business.” Dan stomped away. Atticus might be a genius, but there were things even he couldn’t understand. He didn’t know what it was like being a Cahill. To know that nothing was what it seemed. To have a painful past that refused to stay buried.

  Timbuktu wasn’t the only victim of desertification.

  Dan was afraid he could feel his own soul turning to dust.

  Erasmus sat in the Starcity Cinema watching Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, or You Won’t Get Life Again. This was his third time seeing the comedy and he found it just as funny as the first time.

  He grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bucket in his lap and wondered how many films he had seen in his life.

  Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I should make a list.

  When he was on the run with his mom, they went to the movies every day, no matter what city or country they were hiding in. The theaters were dark and safe, and the films took their minds off the fact that people were trying to kill them. Erasmus had honed his language skills in front of the big screen. He had wanted to grow up to be a film director. Then his mother was killed.

  He felt tears fill his eyes. He could be a sap when he was watching a film he knew she would like.

  His cell phone vibrated. He wiped his eyes with a greasy napkin, then slipped the phone out of his leather pocket.

  The woman is preparing to leave. She has requested a taxi.

  The text was from a server at the restaurant inside the Orchid Hotel.

  Erasmus got up and quickly exited the theater. As he made his way down the crowded street to his motorcycle, a second text arrived. It was from Hamilton.

  We may have a problem.

  Hamilton wasn’t much for words, which Erasmus liked, but he wished the boy had included a few more to describe what the problem was. He got on his motorcycle and gunned it, making it to the hotel in less than five minutes.

  Hamilton was exactly where he had left him a few hours earlier, but there was no sign of Jonah.

  Across the street at the Orchid were two police cars and a couple dozen young people brandishing camera phones.

  “Where’s Jonah?” Erasmus asked, still straddling his motorcycle.

  “Yo, dude,” a voice whispered behind him. “It wasn’t my fault!”

  Erasmus turned his head. Jonah was peeking around the corner of a rather noxious overflowing dumpster. He had on fake glasses, a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, baggy Bermuda shorts, black socks, and sandals.

  Erasmus cracked a grin. “You might as well have put on a neon sign that says I’m trying not to look like Jonah Wizard.”

  “I think I might have made a mistake,” Jonah said miserably.

  “You danced with a cobra,” Erasmus said.

  “YouTube?”

  Erasmus nodded.

  “Sorry, dude.”

  “You lasted longer than I thought.”

  The police were clearing the crowd so a taxi could pull up to the entrance.

  “Luna’s on the move,” Erasmus said. “That’s her taxi. When she gets into it, we’ll follow. Stay two car lengths behind me. There are more motorcycles than cars here so I don’t think she’ll notice us. But this could be a ruse of some kind. Luna might ride around in the taxi for a while and come right back here to see if anyone is tailing her.” The hotel doors pushed open. “Here she comes.”

  The crowd didn’t pay the slightest attention to the little old lady climbing into the back of the taxi. Erasmus pulled out into traffic behind it.

  Hamilton jumped on the rickshaw motorcycle and kicked it to life. Jonah crouched down and hobbled toward the rickshaw so he couldn’t be seen from across the street.

  “Hurry up!” Hamilton yelled.

  “Yo, dude, it’s my turn to drive!”

  “Just jump in back or I’ll leave you behind.”


  Their argument turned heads across the street.

  A young girl gasped, turned bright red, and started hopping up and down and pointing. “Jonah Wizard!” she screamed.

  The rickshaw was not nearly as fast as Erasmus’s motorcycle. Ham and Jonah wouldn’t have caught up at all if it hadn’t been for the snarled traffic on the freeway and Hamilton’s crazy driving. Jonah bounced around in the back, keeping an eye out behind him for oncoming fans, and on the cars in front of him for oncoming death. He tore off his ridiculous disguise and struggled into one of Ham the Giant’s tracksuits, which wasn’t easy in the backseat of a rickshaw.

  So far they’d ditched the fans, but Jonah knew from experience that this could change in a split second. The fans were on their cell phones, calling friends and tweeting. Jonah Wizard is headed west on Nehru Road in a motorcycle rickshaw! He’s being driven by a guy that looks like a marine wearing a powder blue tracksuit!

  It wouldn’t be long before they were spotted by a driver or passenger. All it would take is one tweet, and the fans would converge from all directions like hungry locusts.

  Hamilton was paying no attention to Jonah. He was focused intently on Erasmus weaving in and out of traffic in front of them. He had no idea which taxi Erasmus was even following — there were at least fifty on the road. After about a half an hour traffic started to thin out and Ham got a bead on the car they were tailing. Luna’s taxi exited the freeway, turned south toward Mahim Bay, snaked its way through several side streets, and finally came to a stop in front of a three-story warehouse. Erasmus pulled into an alley a half a block away. Hamilton turned in behind him.

  “Stay out of sight,” Erasmus said. He crept up to the alley entrance and peeked around to look up the street. “She’s in the building. The taxi left. We’ll wait until it gets dark, then move in closer.”

  Erasmus turned around to the two boys. “I think Luna’s led us to a Vesper safe house. It’s the first time I’ve ever found one.”

  He took up a position at the end of the alley and watched the warehouse. Jonah and Hamilton sat in the rickshaw and watched him. An hour passed before Erasmus moved. For a big man he was very light on his feet.